If anybody wants, I can just dump the APK for the FM Radio from my Samsung Galaxy S Apollo. It's running Froyo, so there shouldn't be any compatibility issues...

I've tried, and others have too, but that didn't seem to work. I don't remember the message exactly, something on the lines of "No supporting hardware found."

You definitely need to play around with the rom to get it to work. This is why the SpiritFM.apk is the easiest option... even the expired 'free' version with no RDS. How often do you look at your phone to see the song/artist info anyay?

why would the procedure which doesn't modify anything on the phone unlike the stl5 route which chan posted screw up ( i used chan's procedure and things worked fine though). All this does is look into the hex file for the valid code which is what those unlocking websites do. All you have to do is root the phone first and look into the hex file. Do this or pay 10 -20 bucks to get the code.

Here's my story -- spent 10 minutes reading the RFD thread, bricked the 1st phone. Then spent 5 hours reading the on the XDA website trying to recover it, failed! The phone is hard bricked. But have learned a lot through the reading. Bought a 2nd phone and successfully unlock within 5 minutes. Here are my tips to share...

1. I use the zip file to root the phone via SD card install method
2. then I downloaded the Android Terminal Emulator program via market over WiFi directly onto the phone
3. change the font size to 12pt for easier reading (I'm old...may need bi-focal soon)...
4. with NO SIM card in the phone, put the phone into AIRPLANE mode (for good measure, to avoid background services in accessing EFS stl5 while you are peeking)
5. follow the XDA commands exactly for mounting/peeking/unmounting the efs stl5 (note some people choose to copy the perso.txt onto microSD and read on PC instead)
6. turn off the phone, put in a non-BELL SIM (should be recent SIM within 2 yrs old), then turn on the phone
7. once booted successfully, take it out of AIRPLANE mode and it will ask for the unlock code
8. once unlocked (it will say "Network Unlock Successful"), check the personalization status as well as the IMEI to make sure that they are still intact
9. if your IMEI and lock status check out all good, then you are done!

There is always a risk of bricking your phone, hence people all say "Do it at your own risk...", here's the stats from the quick poll during the Zellers round...

Here's the question: If we're simply reading data off of a partition which is only read-only, how can it then be bricked? As well, can't we just boot the phone into a fastboot mode, boot a temporary image, and "borrow" the partition that way? Maybe I'm off-track with these Samsung devices...

I've been using this phone for a little over a month now and my overall impression of the GIO is great. It is cheaply made but feature rich and the customization abilities of Android are amazing. I ran the phone locked using a Virgin sim for 2 weeks before rooting and unlocking using network code. Used Titanium Backup to remove most, if not all, of that Bell and Samsung pre-loaded bloatware so the phone now loads much faster at start up given that very few programs are actually loading.

Seriously, for what you get in Android 3.2 and everything the GIO can do, I honestly can't say anything bad about this great little phone. People wanting more are probably power users and should be looking at other phones anyway.

Just a tip: If you have any widgets on your home screen or programs that take over a default job such as dialer's or launchers make sure you have those installed to the phone memory and not the SD card. Things installed on the SD card can take a few seconds to load whereas the phone memory seems to be instant. So if you have a launcher installed on your SD card it may take a moment to load at startup and your theme will look like the default setup until the launcher fully loads. Overall if you have any widgets or anything you want loaded at startup then the phone memory is best. Use the SD card for apps that you open and close manually.

If you had spent half an hour reading the pinkpt post and made sure you understood everything and followed everything exactly, you wouldn't have to spend 5 hours reading XDA website, which I agree is very cumbersome due to the shear amount of information there. I followed pinkpt's instructions and everything worked out perfectly.

I have had this phone for a few weeks. Works great, I just use it over wifi and have dozens of Android apps installed.

Right now this deal is getting overshadowed by the Optimus Quantum for the same price, which has significantly better hardware, but is much bigger and and heavier (due to slide out keyboard), and runs Windows 7 Mobile.

The Gio has a lot more software available right now and is much slimmer and lighter, but no fold out keyboard.

Honestly, the stl5 tutorial I previously posted is the simplest as you don't have to install any software on your computer. And if you double-check all the commands before you enter them, you should not be bricking your phone.

The newer bml5 tutorial posted by pinkpt has a lower chance of bricking as you are not messing with the EFS partition, but is more complicated.

However, the bml5 method can be simplified if you use Android Terminal Emulator and WordPad (so you don't have to install the Android SDK and a Hex Editor). I had to unlock a phone for a friend, so here's a step-by-step:

Open the file using WordPadN.B.: As bml5.img is a 9 MB file, this will take some time to open.

Under the EDIT menu, click FIND and search for a series of three sets of eight zeroes (i.e. search for "00000000")N.B.: In my file, the first set of eight zeroes appeared after clicking FIND NEXT 36 times

Your eight digit numeric unlock code (blacked out in screenshot below) will appear before the three sets of eight zeroes; copy this down

Unlocking the Phone

Put in a non-Bell SIM card into the phone (might also have to be non-Virgin/non-Solo if the next step doesn't show up for you; I used a Fido SIM card).

Turn on the phone.

You will see a prompt asking for the network code.

Using the on-screen number-pad, enter your eight digit unlock code.

If successful a prompt will say "Network unlock successful". If not, then it will say "Network unlock unsuccessful"

To double-check, bring up the lock status screen by dialing this number:

However, the bml5 method can be simplified if you use Android Terminal Emulator and WordPad (so you don't have to install the Android SDK and a Hex Editor). I had to unlock a phone for a friend, so here's a step-by-step:

Thanks for this post. I used the BML5 with SDK method and it worked just fine, but using a local terminal is definitely easier, as the most time-consuming step was actually downloading the SDK tools. I'll use this on the next one.

Definition: ThanA conjunction used to introduce the second element of an unequal comparison: She had better grammar than I.

I've been using this phone for a little over a month now and my overall impression of the GIO is great. It is cheaply made but feature rich and the customization abilities of Android are amazing. I ran the phone locked using a Virgin sim for 2 weeks before rooting and unlocking using network code. Used Titanium Backup to remove most, if not all, of that Bell and Samsung pre-loaded bloatware so the phone now loads much faster at start up given that very few programs are actually loading.

Seriously, for what you get in Android 3.2 and everything the GIO can do, I honestly can't say anything bad about this great little phone. People wanting more are probably power users and should be looking at other phones anyway.

Just a tip: If you have any widgets on your home screen or programs that take over a default job such as dialer's or launchers make sure you have those installed to the phone memory and not the SD card. Things installed on the SD card can take a few seconds to load whereas the phone memory seems to be instant. So if you have a launcher installed on your SD card it may take a moment to load at startup and your theme will look like the default setup until the launcher fully loads. Overall if you have any widgets or anything you want loaded at startup then the phone memory is best. Use the SD card for apps that you open and close manually.

Honestly, the stl5 tutorial I previously posted is the simplest as you don't have to install any software on your computer. And if you double-check all the commands before you enter them, you should not be bricking your phone.

It's not only the wrong commands that bricks the phone, even if you have done everything right you still have a chance to brick it or lose you IMEI. There were some posts on xda about this and you can look them up to confirm. I think you should remove your post for the stl5 method. Don't get me wrong, your tutorial is very good, but the stl5 method is not a safe way to unlock (your bml5 tutorial is awesome).

It's not only the wrong commands that bricks the phone, even if you have done everything right you still have a chance to brick it or lose you IMEI. There were some posts on xda about this and you can look them up to confirm. I think you should remove your post for the stl5 method. Don't get me wrong, your tutorial is very good, but the stl5 method is not a safe way to unlock (your bml5 tutorial is awesome).

Agreed. The bml5 tutorial was completely straight-forward. I had no problem rooting a brand new Gio I picked up an hour ago. Just so everyone knows, the bml5 method, with the exception of rooting, makes no unauthorized modifications to your phone. Simply put, the internal memory has the unlock key stored unencrypted in a partition which is mounted as read-only. I don't remember much about the cat command in linux, but I believe you can have cat echo a particular portion of a binary file. Anyways, in this method, you are simply copying the partition to a file on your sd card. It in no way modifies it. It was a really awesome tutorial, thank you!

When in doubt do a Google search to make sure it''s safe to remove and also back up everything, that way you can restore if need be. I also forced over most apps to install on SD card. The GIO is a fast little phone with a little tweaking.

For the BML5 method noted above (using the terminal emulator), how do you download and install the terminal emulator on the phone without a SIM card etc? Are you able to connect to the Android market via WIFI as soon as you have rooted the phone? (i.e. without it even being set up on Bell's network?)

When in doubt do a Google search to make sure it''s safe to remove and also back up everything, that way you can restore if need be. I also forced over most apps to install on SD card. The GIO is a fast little phone with a little tweaking.